Reflections on the state of the world which proceed with the scriptures in one hand and the newspaper in the other

Wednesday, January 04, 2017

Mourning in America – Part I: The Framers’ Worst Nightmare

Two days before the national
election, President Obama spoke to a crowd in Kissimmee, 25 miles south of
here. The crowd reflected an Osceola County which over the past two decades has
become a minority-majority population in which no single ethnic group is the
majority.

It’s a sneak preview of what Florida will look like by the next
census and the country as a whole by mid-century. Osceola County is a cultural
petri dish of sorts in which the three major minorities have had to learn how
to work together to build a multicultural society with varying levels of
success.

The last President of America
urged the crowd to vote the following Tuesday with this admonition:
“[This election] is about the character of this country. Who are we? What do we
stand for?” The election could not have been stated in starker terms.

The election itself had come
down to two largely caricaturized candidates. Philosopher Cornell West would
describe it as a choice between a neoliberal technocrat and a neo-fascist
narcissist.

Slightly left of center was
Hillary Clinton, first woman nominee of a major political party, who was widely
seen as a deceptive policy wonk far too cozy with Wall Street and the defense
industry for many on the Democratic left. That group included myself who had
hoped in vain to “Feel the Bern” with the failed attempt to nominate Bernie
Sanders.

On the far right (because
American political culture has never been balanced, skewing right of center as
a matter of course) was a billionaire developer with no political experience
and a spotty record of bankruptcies and lawsuits. He had largely earned his
party’s nomination on his skillful ability as a demagogue, demonizing women,
disabled people, immigrants, Muslims and LGBTQ people for political gain.

On Tuesday, November 8, the US
voting populace (i.e., those who were actually allowed to vote, never a given
in Republican dominated states like Florida) faced a clear choice between an
ice princess and a monster.

In the end, the voters chose
the monster.

Spinning in their graves

Well, sort of.

In the second incidence of
electoral/popular vote disparity in the past five elections, the candidate who
won the majority among US voters did not win the election. Instead,
the winner of a thin victory in the electoral college will succeed Barack Obama
in the White House, Mr. Trump having won just enough votes in the right states
(including Florida, sadly) to claim that victory. In so doing, Trump will enter
the White House with the smallest popular support since the election of 1824won by Andrew Jackson when the pre-political convention
period Democratic-Republican Party fielded three different candidates.

Unlike the most recent case of
electoral disparity in 2000, Trump did not have to rely on a Supreme Court
dominated by his father’s justices to stop the recounting of votes in the state
governed by his brother – a recount that would surely have allowed the actual
winner of the election, Al Gore, to become president - to be declared the
victor. In the end, Trump would win enough electoral votes to take the White
House even as he would lose the nation’s popular vote by 3 million votes.

There is no small amount of
irony in the disparity between the popular and electoral results. The Electoral
College was designed by elite and largely elitist Framers to be a check on
popular sovereignty. The fear of large states supporting favorite son
candidates to dominate smaller states was high among their concerns. Those
fears would foster the creation of a bicameral Congress providing small states
with a check on their larger state counterparts who could easily control the
population-based House of Representatives through a US Senate with equal
representation.

But an even more basic fear
for the Framers centered around the potential for a poorly informed public to
choose a populist demagogue. Framer Alexander Hamilton articulated this fear in
“The Federalist Papers,” a series of pamphlets he generated along with James
Madison and John Jay as a means of explaining and supporting the adoption of the
original Constitution.

According to Joe Miller at the
Annenberg Public Policy Center, Hamilton believed the Constitution was designed
to ensure

“that
the office of President will never fall to the lot of any man who is not in an
eminent degree endowed with the requisite qualifications.” The point of the
Electoral College is to preserve “the sense of the people,” while at the same
time ensuring that a president is chosen “by men most capable of analyzing the
qualities adapted to the station, and acting under circumstances favorable to
deliberation, and to a judicious combination of all the reasons and inducements
which were proper to govern their choice.” (Joe Miller, “The Reason for the
Electoral College,” FactCheck.org, Annenberg Public Policy Center, University
of Pennsylvania).

No doubt Hamilton must be
rolling over in his grave knowing that it was precisely this creation he and the other
Framers worked so hard to perfect that made possible the ascension to the
Presidency of a man who is observably “not in an eminent degree endowed with
the requisite qualifications” to hold that office, populist sentiment to the
contrary.

Framer James Madison’s fears
were more general. Like Plato, he distrusted direct democracy and in particular
its proclivities toward popular tyranny:

Madison
worried about what he called “factions,” which he defined as groups of citizens
who have a common interest in some proposal that would either violate the
rights of other citizens or would harm the nation as a whole. Madison’s fear –
which Alexis de Tocqueville later dubbed “the tyranny of the majority” – was
that a faction could grow to encompass more than 50 percent of the population,
at which point it could “sacrifice to its ruling passion or interest both the
public good and the rights of other citizens.” (Miller)

In the wake of an election in
which a candidate who rode to electoral victory on a wave of anti-woman,
anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim, anti-people of color and anti-gay sentiment,
pimping the very worst of American prejudices and fears as a means of gaining
access to power, no doubt Madison is spinning in his grave along with fellow
Framer Hamilton.

Across the pond, Alexis de
Tocqueville is no doubt shaking his head in vindication.

About Me

I am a fifth generation Floridian, a fourth generation educator, third generation college educator. My great grandparents were named Reed and Wright so I guess it was fate that I would end up a teacher. I am a recovering lawyer who still holds an inactive license with the Florida Bar (I stopped practice in 1990) and an ordained Episcopal priest. My spirituality is that of an inner world (nature) mystic. I am Franciscan to my very core, a professed member of 26 years in the Third Order Society of St. Francis (TSSF). Andy , my gentle souled, soft-spoken partner of 44 years became my legal husband in 2010 on the steps of the US Supreme Court. He is G-d's greatest gift to my life. I live within two hours of my nuclear family members. Historically I have been a yellow dawg Democrat though my politics are decidedly Green. I hold a Ph.D. in Religion, Law and Society from FSU, an M.Div. from Church Divinity School of the Pacific, member seminary of the GTU in Berkeley, CA, and a J.D. and a B.A. in History and Secondary Ed from the University of Florida. I complete a two year program at Richard Rohr’s Living School for Contemplation and Action in Albuquerque, NM August 2017.